For congested LGUs, columbariums are the way to go

The road to Baesa Public Cemetery in Quezon City is less busy than most roads to other burial grounds this Undas.

According to the city government’s latest inventory, more than 2,000 people were buried in this cemetery, but there have been no new burials here since 2012.

The cemetery is currently being converted into a crematorium and columbarium.

“Overcrowded na kasi ang cemetery, that’s why we proposed to put up a crematorium and columbarium there,” said Quezon City Civil Registry Department Administrative Division officer-in-charge Jem Tagavilla in a phone interview with GMA News Research.

Citing sample designs from the project proposal, Tagavilla said the columbarium could potentially accommodate 2,000 to 5,000 vaults.

It is only now that Quezon City, the country’s most populous city, will be getting a public crematorium and columbarium, although proposals for such projects have been around for more than a decade. Both facilities will be operational possibly by next year.

Makati, the country’s richest city, hopes to follow suit; a public columbarium offering free cremation and inurnment services to residents is in the incumbent city government’s pipeline of projects.

The local government of Caloocan, home to the country’s most populous barangay and itself among the country’s most populous cities, is also eyeing a parcel of land in Camarin for a proposed columbarium.

Manila, the country’s most densely populated city, used to offer cremation services at the Manila North Cemetery, but the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Environmental Management Bureau halted its operations in 2016 over violations of the Philippine Clean Air Act.

There are two local government units offering cremation services in Metro Manila at present: Mandaluyong City, which redeveloped its public cemetery in 2009 to include both a crematorium and columbarium; and Pasay City, which has its own crematorium but no columbarium.

Over 470,000 deaths a year

These LGUs acknowledge the obvious: we need to make space for the dead, because the dead will keep coming.

Philippine Statistics Authority data on the number of deaths from 2000 to 2017 yield an average of 471,546 deaths per year, with the annual figures generally showing an increasing trend.

Based on standards set by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB), the minimum size for a burial plot in ground interment is 1 meter by 2.44 meters, or an area of 2.44 square meters.

The minimum size for a single compartment or vault in a columbarium is 300 millimeters by 300 millimeters, or an area of 0.09 square meters.

Three Lunetas

Based on these given values, GMA News Research estimates that every year, the country needs an area of about 1.15 million square meters--nearly thrice the size of Rizal Park--to bury its dead in underground niches. But only 42,439 square meters or one-tenth the size of the famous Manila landmark are needed if those who died were cremated and inurned instead.

This computation does not factor in other alternatives such as interment in mausoleums and above-ground entombment, both of which take up more space than underground niches. The computation also assumes that there is only one niche to a burial plot and one urn to each vault.

In reality, however, many cemeteries across the country have “apartment-style” niches stacked on top of each other up to several layers high. In others, walkways were inadvertently if not inappropriately converted into additional burial plots--all due to the lack of open space on which to dig or build new niches.

While local governments explore options on how to maximize what little cemetery space they have, private companies fill in the gap.

HLURB statistics on issued licenses to sell real property in recent years show an increasing trend in the number of memorial park and columbarium units up for sale.

Engineer Anabel Narce of HLURB-NCR said most of the applications for license to sell units in the “memorial park or columbarium” non-residential category in Metro Manila are columbarium applications. Many of the memorial park applications are for provincial locations.

“Columbarium applications are more preferred in Metro Manila because there is no more space here,” Narce explained in a phone interview with GMA News Research.

In urban areas, the columbarium setting works because it accommodates more of the dead even as it takes up less space. “A columbarium can have many niches on top of each other, with each niche capable of storing more than one urn,” she added.

More cremations

“Besides, it appears that people are more open to the idea of cremation,” Narce noted.

Cris Tuason has a similar observation about people’s preference for cremation. At the Pasay City Public Cemetery and Crematorium where she works as a data encoder, there are usually five to six cremations a day, while traditional burials are only around three to five a day.

“Siguro dahil congested na rin yung place, mas preferred nila na cremation na lang; less space occupied,” Tuason told GMA News Research in an interview over the phone. “Minsan, preference o bilin na rin ng namatay, for practical reasons. Less ang pagod sa pamilyang naiwan -- after nilang mai-submit yung mga documents, diretso na yung katawan ng namatay sa cremation. Urn na lang ang iuuwi at paglalamayan.”

Financial reasons may also be a factor.

Ever Memorial Garden in Valenzuela, the developer with the most number of license to sell memorial park/columbarium units based on HLURB’s website, handles both burials and inurnments. Their cheapest underground burial lot costs P103,680, plus burial services costing around P29,000 to P30,000. These amounts do not include the cost of coffins, which they do not sell.

On the other hand, they offer columbarium crypts starting at P71,870. The cremation service costs P20,000, plus inurnment service costs P1,500. They sell funeral urns from P3,000 up.

Cremation costs at public crematories are much cheaper. In Pasay and Mandaluyong, cremation service for residents are within the range of P8,000. Inurnment at the Mandaluyong public crematorium cost between P1,200 up to P2,400 per year.

As for the soon-to-rise Quezon City crematorium and columbarium, city civil registry official Tagavilla said the fees for the use of these facilities are still being discussed. Ultimately, the project will give residents an affordable option when the time comes to bid their departed loved ones a final goodbye.

And there will be more work to be done after the completion of the crematorium and columbarium in Baesa.

“Our ambition is to rehabilitate the Bagbag and Novaliches cemeteries, as well,” Tagavilla said, noting that the two other public cemeteries in Quezon City are also congested. — MDM, GMA News